Party Leaders and Election Workers Charged With Forging Signatures

Party Leaders and Election Workers Charged With Forging Signatures

Two Suffolk County, New York Board of Elections workers and an Independence Party leader were charged Tuesday with forging signatures in an attempt to improve the chances of Republican candidates. The chair of the East Hampton Town Republican Party, who resigned last week, is expected to be charged Wednesday, Newsday reports.

The names of people who had died years ago were among the alleged forgeries.

The charges include second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, first-degree offering a false instrument for filing, and official misconduct. The now-former GOP chair, Amos Goodman, is accused of submitting nominating petitions that contained at least 43 forgeries.

None of the candidates allegedly boosted won their races. Those charged have pleaded not guilty.

“In a bizarre twist, as reported by the Southampton Press, the soon-to-be-charged Goodman accused the Independence party of forging signatures last summer, the same crime he seems to have committed,” Talking Points Memo adds.

Patch adds that the vice chairperson of the East Hampton Town Independence Party, who is also a former East Hampton Town councilwoman, was also charged.

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Some are also pointing to Trump’s tweets from Wednesday morning, in which he said he was “entitled to massive write offs and depreciation,” and calling the entire process a “sport.”

….you would get it by building, or even buying. You always wanted to show losses for tax purposes….almost all real estate developers did – and often re-negotiate with banks, it was sport. Additionally, the very old information put out is a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!

2000: GOP elects an illiterate millionaire-at-birth who couldn’t find oil in Texas to cut taxes for millionaires.2016: GOP elects an illiterate millionaire-at-birth who lost a billion $ while owning casinos to cut taxes for millionaires.#BillionDollarLoser#MAGA

The real scandal is the fact that Donald Trump probably got to keep the tax losses that were actually suffered by other people, like his limited partners. There is absolutely nothing “self-made” about this grifter. #BillionDollarLoser

There are supposed to be 435 Members of Congress, but one of those seats is empty. The North Carolina elections board is refusing to certify the election of Republican Mark Harris after stunning irregularities led to an investigation of his slim 905-vote lad over Democrat Dan McCready.

Kim Strach, the executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections “revealed Monday that state officials had uncovered a ‘coordinated’ and ‘unlawful’ effort to collect absentee ballots on behalf of” Harris, HuffPost reports.

At a public hearing Monday, Strach “said investigators had evidence that McCrae Dowless, a political operative working on behalf of the Harris campaign, filled out and mailed in incomplete or blank ballots from both his office and home. She said Dowless paid people in cash to collect requests for absentee ballots and the ballots themselves. The state board also has evidence, she said, that Dowless paid people to falsify signatures on absentee ballots indicating that they had witnessed those ballots being filled out.”

Dowless “is a convicted felon who faced jail time for fraud and perjury,” The Charlotte-Observer reported in December. One woman told a local reporter Dowless paid her to collect absentee ballots, which is illegal. She had said she was not aware it was illegal because Dowless had been doing it for years. The woman, Cheryl Kinlaw, said Dowless “had stacks” of absentee ballots on his desk.

Strach said Harris, who is a far right wing anti-LGBT North Carolina preacher, paid Dowless $131,275.

Former Trump personal attorney and former Trump Organization Vice President Michael Cohen is now responding publicly to a bombshell report in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal. That report states Cohen agreed to pay a Liberty University Vice President $50,000 to rig polls for Donald Trump.

Thursday morning Cohen took to Twitter to state that the poll rigging was “at the direction of and for the sole benefit” of Donald Trump.

As for the @WSJ article on poll rigging, what I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of @realDonaldTrump@POTUS. I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it.

The Wall Street Journal reports Liberty University‘s Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Analytics, John Gauger, who runs a small tech firm called RedFinch Solutions, tried unsuccessfully to rig a CNBC poll and a Drudge Report poll.